Wednesday, August 10, 2011

The Process Behind: Admissions Poster

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Every year I have the pleasure of working with Natalie and the outstanding Admissions department at PCA&D. Every other year I get to redesign the look for their office, which is also coincidentally the best year! This year was of the "every other" kind so I dug in and began the process of tackling the first piece we dive into every year; the poster.

(click image to enlarge)

STAGE 1: You've got to start somewhere, and for one reason or another, I often start conservative. However, the color scheme, fonts, partial obscuring of imagery and general guidelines of the final piece appeared instantly in the process.

(click image to enlarge)

STAGE 2: I'm all about type-driven design so I busted the type out of the box and began to arrange it flush-left then flush-right and scaling it up and down all the while. I wanted to create a grid but then smash it, while also respecting it. No small feat.

(click image to enlarge)

STAGE 3: The break-through stage, for sure. Back came the horizontal strip, now with a friend, and a healthy dose of a -11.75º angular tilt. I pictured this on the walls of schools and offices, knowing the tilt will demand attention and cause it to leap off the wall. Also, my goal now was focused on creating the sense that this poster captured merely a small segment of an otherwise on-going, ever-growing massive world of student artwork created at PCA&D. The poster, unlike previous years, was not about a few pieces – but the student work as a collective.

(click image to enlarge)

STAGE 4: Naturally, I had to try the positive 11.75º angle as well. Unlike the -11.75º attempt, where I was all about it and attempting every logical type alignment I could muster, it didn't take me long to know this was not the better solution of the two.

(click image to enlarge)

STAGE 5: And finally, instead of angling the bars and type, what about angling the artwork? This brought an all-new feeling to the poster, while utilizing something I was gravitating towards all along with the tilt. It came down to a matter of playing with the composition of type over top the imagery and the removal of specific artwork for reasons such as theme, content, and redundancy. The changing out of imagery was trickier than in previous years, of course, and often times I wanted to kick myself for painting myself into a corner with this approach. Regardless, I was very excited that they picked this version while, honestly, I also would have been very happy if they selected Stage 3 (far right). A good position to be in, for sure.

And with the final approval, the poster set the tone of typography, color and composition for the rest of the Admissions materials to follow. I truly do love this project.